Traffic shaping deals with datagram traffic (a stream of datagram packets) from one or many source computers to one or many destination computers. A traffic shaper lies between the source and the destination of each packet of the traffic. The traffic is prioritized by the shaper, and based on this, a decision is made for each packet whether it is delivered to the destination or not, as well as when it is delivered.
In a typical solution, a traffic shaping deployment may include multiple traffic processing devices, each shaping a portion of the traffic. The quantity or makeup of traffic going to each device may not be the same, which means that simply dividing the desired values by the number of devices and allowing each device to shape the traffic independent of the others will not be sufficient to achieve the performance goals.
Deriving the solution for the correct rates and parameters to achieve performance goals is non-trivial. This cannot generally be done manually as the quantity and makeup of traffic in each traffic processing device is constantly changing. As such, there is a need for an improved method, system and apparatus for managing a shaper or shapers.